In general, molded products containing a carbonaceous material as an a filler have been produced by adding a binder to a carbonaceous powder such as graphite or coke, kneading them, molding the knead, curing it, optionally firing, and graphitizing the cured product. Required characteristics vary depending upon the purpose or use of the produced carbonaceous molded products, and therefore the molded products have been produced by using many molding processes and many binders. Many reports and proposals therefor are found in literatures. (e.g., "Revised Introduction to Carbon Material", p. 135, Carbon Material Association; Mizushima and Okada, "Carbon Material" p. 55, Kyoritsu Shuppan; Ishikawa and Nagaoki, "New Carbon Engineering", p. 173, Kindai Hensyusha)
These conventional carbonaceous molded products have characteristics inherent to carbonaceous materials, i.e., light weight, high strength, high young's modulus, conduction property, corrosion resistance, heat resistance and sliding property. While such carbonaceous molded products having high young modulus are advantageous when rigidity is required, they lack flexibility because they have no yield point. From the standpoint of safety faster, carbonaceous molded products having much higher strength have been required.
We have proposed an elastic graphite structure having excellent elasticity characteristics as carbonaceous materials (Japanese Patent Application No. 164808/1987). This elastic graphite structure per se is of light weight and exhibits good elasticity. The elastic graphite structure has excellent characteristics which could not be obtained by the conventional carbonaceous materials.
However, in the conventional molding technique, it is not necessarily easy to mold the carbonaceous materials into a specific molded product in such a state that characteristics inherent to starting carbonaceous materials are utilized, even if the carbonaceous materials per se have good material characteristics. Molding processes conformed to material characteristics have not established yet so far.